What effect would you like your music to have, and how do you see yourself as an artist?

I think I’m more about emotion than about being a head-rocker. Some music makes your head nod, and that’s good; I love those drumbeats that make you go [bangs his head]. I’d like people to listen to my music with headphones by themselves rather than go out to hear it in a club. Sometimes I’d like to make a bangin’ track, but I’d rather be there with the emotion. I want to touch people’s souls. That’s the one thing I wanted to do at the beginning of my career, and it’s the one thing I want to do now. I’m really in it for that. You get all the good things that come along with it — the traveling, people treating you good — but I want to touch people’s souls. And I don’t think it’s worth me doing music if I can’t do that. I want to go a bit deeper than the ears. I want to touch you inside there. I want to make you feel something. I’ve still got that now. That’s what keeps me going.

A woman once came up to me after a concert. She was telling me all this beautiful stuff, and I didn’t want to hear it, y’know what I mean? I was just about to walk away, and she says to me, “Look, I don’t want to seem to go on, but I mean what I say: you’re in my home and you’re in my children.” And that blew my mind. That was the heaviest thing anyone’s ever said to me. She plays my music to her kids. That’s heavy, and that’s what I want. That is better than a royalty check — and a royalty check is good!